Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Book Review: Crewel, by Gennifer Albin

Summary: Enter a tangled world of secrets and intrigue where a girl is in charge of others destinies, but not her own.

Sixteen-year-old
Adelice Lewys has always been special. When her parents discover her
gift—the ability to weave the very fabric of reality—they train her to
hide it. For good reason, they don’t want her to become a Spinster — one
of the elite, beautiful, and deadly women who determine what people
eat, where they live, how many children they have, and even when they
die.

Thrust into the opulent Western Coventry, Adelice will be
tried, tested and tempted as she navigates the deadly politics at play
behind its walls. Now caught in a web of lies and forbidden romance,
she must unravel the sinister truth behind her own unspeakable power.
Her world is hanging by a thread, and Adelice, alone, can decide to save
it — or destroy it.

Review: I picked up this book for two reasons: the cover looked cool, and the
author was coming to talk and sign in my town in a few months.

... I still don't really have any other reasons for reading it.

For one, this book had an extremely
slow "start". And by "start", I mean the first half of this book. I was
indifferent and disinterested until about page 140 out of 357 pages,
and then things (finally!) began picking up. I'm not sure why that was,
exactly. There was action, and there were things happening that should have been interesting, but they just... weren't. It took 140 pages for this book to actually start.

This
book was also fairly predictable. All the "big reveals" and "twists"
and such, I caught almost immediately, at the barest amount of
foreshadowing. Maybe I've read too many YA books, but the amount of
predictability and cliche used in this book was just awful.

Now,
I don't want to say that this book was totally awful, either. Skimming
the reviews on here, I'm seeing a lot of "creative"s and "unique"s. And I
don't disagree with that. This was a very unique and creative world,
with the world being made of a weave. Of course, it wasn't the
first time I've seen weaving being such an integral part of the story,
and related to life and reality and the world. So it was creative... to an extent.

The
one other thing I actually liked with this story was the prose. The
writing itself was actually really good, and I found six quotes in this
book that I really liked (The average per book for me is about 3 or
four.) The way she strung words together was great.

So, that's
my personal opinion. But I think this is the type of book that (judging
from the amount of fours and fives I see here) it really depends on the
reader. Try reading it for the writing, and the world.

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ABOUT ME

I'm a teenager who loves to read and write. When I'm not doing either of those things, you can find me on the computer reviewing books and typing up my writing. I love meeting and talking to new people, so you can email me anytime (even if you just want to talk!) at bookishblog@yahoo.com, or comment on any of my posts. I started this blog to help keep track of what I read, and because I like sharing my opinion with others.